Pros at Play

In Europe, professional tennis tournaments are outstanding sport events. But not in the U. S. The majority of U. S. tennis pros are teaching pros. For their $15-a-year dues to the Professional Lawn Tennis Association they get little except a chance to be trounced by top-rank exhibition pros in the annual championship tournament. U. S. fans look with lacklustre eye on the national professional tournament because the top-rank exhibition pros, razor-keen after a season of barnstorming, always breeze through to the final--and watching the exhibitionists play a match is like watching the exhibitionists play an exhibition.

Last week the 14th annual tournament of the Professional Tennis Association, staged at Chicago's Town & Tennis Club, proceeded with professional smoothness. Surviving the quarter-finals were Barnstormers Don Budge (playing in his first pro tournament), Fred Perry (1938 champion), Big Bill Tilden (winner in 1931, the year he turned pro), John Nogrady, a young upstart from Montclair, N. J. Nogrady, a teaching pro, would probably have been eliminated earlier had Barnstormer Ellsworth Vines, defending champion, been among the contestants. Vines, who had been playing golf all summer, had not entered the tournament.

In the semifinals, while Perry disposed of Nogrady, Budge put Tilden's 47-year-old legs through a creaking workout before beating him 6-4, 6-2, 6-4. Then, to no one's surprise, Budge defeated Perry (6-3, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3) to become the professional champion of the U. S. Prize: $250.

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